For the beauty of the Twelve Days of Christmas

Dear Ethan,

I am so grateful for your delightful gift of Vanilla scented candles depicting the 12 days of Christmas.  It is so important to number our days, but we are not so closely reminded of this except at Christmas time.  It is amazing how we think about how many days until the wonderful day that we celebrate each year.

I am 21170 days old, just about and you are only 7265 years old, give or take a few days or so.

ON my first attempt at mothering I got a girl and then a boy and then a girl and then a boy and then a girl and then YOU!  It took 6 tries to get an Ethan and I hope you remember that in your every attempt at things.  It takes a lot of tries to get to a delightful combination of things.  I am not saying you need to have 6 or 7 children, but do not despise the beauty of the large family dynamic.  Don’t despise the beauty of the things that happen when a very large group of people live under a single purpose and lifestyle.  You are a wonderful expression of the love between your father and I and I am very glad that I didn’t let the world’s idea of family guide my life.  I am grateful for having gone back to the drawing board in parenting in my late thirties and early forties.  I thought I was crazy.  But you are a wonderful love of my life, that I wouldn’t have had, if I hadn’t run that extra mile.  I am not at all sorry.  You are amazing!

I hope that you are inspired to live up to your name ETHAN and sing of the mercies of the Lord forever in Psalm 89.  I hope that you are inspired to seek out God’s journey for you, in earnest.  Go at it with gusto!  Not just money acquiring or working, but your drawing and your study and your music and your puzzles!  I love my card!  Keep up the great work and know that I am grateful to have spent the last 7000 days getting to know you!  

Jayne Camille Walker

Love MOM

"Read the book of Ezekiel and lets talk"

Thoughts from the Macy's Day Parade

Teach us, Dear Lord to number our days…

LIve like you just came back from being 10 minutes late for the Judgment.

The only thing worse than being in the judgment on the wrong side, is Knowing that all these people followed you into this awful place apart from the mercy and grace…  I knew better than to not trust in Christ, but these simple ones were beguiled and beguiled by their simple minds following me.  My love for them and sympathy for their plight makes my anguish all the more stinging.

The rich man said, please send Lazarus ( the smallest and least of your people)  to tell my brothers, don’t follow me here.  That is the thought of the eldest brother, deceived by his own devices and knowledgable that he has impressed the simple ones to tow the line behind him into the eternal ditch.  That is not just a pothole to be avoided.

Every pothole in NY seems designed to remind you that one day you will be driving down the road and the pothole of hell will rise to meet you, unless you are attached to Christ.

You are late,  The devil taunts, as his design was this all along.  He hates us and wanted us to have and share in the bounty of his deserts.

You should have been here from the first flame, as I was.  You should have known what it was to taste every mournful moment of having lost my first estate of beauty and fame.  I was beautiful, I was most beautiful, but I couldn’t be humbled in my beauty and nothing about torment is beautiful.  Every wicked memory is ugly. Every grievous lick of the flames is hideous and my only comfort is that I am not alone in my anguish, says Satan.  But as a brother and as an elder, I am tormented that my leadership has brought down an entire city into the flames.

And then I awake,  What day is it?  It is December first and Christmas is upon us, not even Christmas day, yet.  I have time to prepare my soul for the merciful advent of the only and true soul changing Savior.  

I am granted a merciful reprieve?  I am granted another moment’s borrowed breath?  Can I use it wisely, this time?  Can I keep my own soul out of that horrible pit and can I lead my brothers alike?

“O Come all ye Faithful!”

It is more truly close to midnight that we want to know.  All of the potholes are coming together to engulf us in the flames of eternity, if we are not attached to life.

Full of faith, not in self.  That would be the choice of the fool.  O come all ye who are trusting and loving a merciful and ever-present help in this earth.  There is no price to be spared to free your soul from the chains of sin.  Link yourself inextricably to Christ and His Church that your soul will have no questions, in that day.  Tell your underlings.  Show them the true and living way.  Help the trust Him also.

If they follow me, they will also be deceived.  It isn’t my help that you need, when you are facing eternity and judgment.  I haven’t paid it all for you.  I haven’t tasted death to deliver you from the eternal anguish.  JESUS alone can and does break the chains of sin.  Hold together with God’s people to build a greater city of guidance into life!

“Joyful and Triumphant!”

Not a single laurel on the head of the victor, but a triumphant part of the victorious bride of Christ who in symphonic combination link together to enjoy the joy and the triumph over the world’s real enemy.  The world’s real enemy is Death, Hell and the Grave.  God has sent a wonderful baby to show us the holy.  We couldn’t even see it without his deliverance and sacrifice to stoop so very low to bring it to us!

s

How was your day at work, mother?

Maliya said to me, Mrs. Jayne I hugged you every day this week, when I was at home.  I thought about you every day, she was saying.  I had a Grandma whose hug was so memorable that it came back to me after she had died.  If that is what she left me it is so much more important to me than the money that she scrupulously saved to give me.  I am far more grateful for the real inheritance of a memorable hug to pass on to the little ones in my care.  The knowledge that there is somebody in this world who loves you enough to give you the access to them. 

I have grown to love these children.  I assert that loving instruction is a brain development tool and that the only thing that separates our children from robots is the emotional element of the instruction of their minds and souls.  Keep hugging me remotely Maliya.  I am hugging you too!

I know you don't mind sharing your mother:})

Am I spoiled as a mother?

Spoiled Children in the South!

I wish I had a quarter for every time I hear a black woman call a child spoiled.

I was called spoiled.  Dr. Spock gave women a reason to call children spoiled in the old days.  I thought that was dead and gone.

How slavery has made us blind to the unity of a common purpose in the rearing of our children!  We spoiled many children as Nannys and Mammys and now we are reorienting our dominion to include our own children.  Can we teach our children to think of themselves as prized and precious as we have Massa’s?

I love the way we look at our children as needing to be humbled.  “She thinks too highly of herself.” “He needs to be knocked down a few pegs.”  Is that so?

I dare say, I think they need to be reminded that they are made in the image of God!  I think they need to be reminded that many of the physical parts of their bodies that they can’t get under control might be caused by ecological factors and not their gluttony.  You are beautiful and you are smart.  You can achieve and work for God’s glory.  You don’t have to follow the pack.  You can carve out your own path to follow.  You are a creator and a thinker and an amazing victor in your own spheres of activity.  You can go anywhere and do anything.

What would happen to us, if we reared our younguns to believe that?  What would our children do with a great self esteem?  What would God say about us in That Day if we gave them that heritage?

My head still hurts from coming against the mentality of the south from New York.  People still refer to people as them and us?  Heads are still bowed with the shame of having darker skin and nappy hair.  The way that we think about ourselves is laid bare so that we can deal with it and address it in our mothering and grandmothering.

God made me black!  God gave me this hair and I love God and what He made me.  My personhood is not my sin.  My mother loves me more than I know.  She had to take care of those children because she was keeping me alive.  She had to teach me to humble myself because she didn’t want to see me lynched.  It is a new day! 

Help me love myself, Mammy!  I want the mammy that raised the earlier generations of Americans to Mammy me!  I love her!  I love what she means to our country and to our heritage as Americans!

What's Up?

Our Democracy hangs or falls on the premise of coming to a consensus on any number of issues.

Consensus is not always agreement.  Consensus demands negotiation.  Sometimes the media guides us through the minefields of the development of consensus, using inflammatory language such as attack, when disagreements become escalated.  That is not attack.  That is spirited discussions.  We would be remiss to allow the loudest voices and the most masterful articulations be the only voices involved in developing consensus.

Not unlike the difference between the pressure that we must put on a pencil or a crayon and the pressure that you must put on a stylus to create an impression on a page; is the difference between the generations in negotiating tactics.  We are completely wrong if we discount the strong and loud measure of a voice like VAVOOM, just because he is loud.  Conversely the measured and thought out response of, lets say a Beto ORourke mustn’t be discounted because he is not yelling at his audience and uses the communication style of a Millenial.

I see his popularity, although sometimes the site sourcing eludes me.

I totally understand the stammering of an elder statesman like Biden and the rantings of a man like Trump.

They are clearly the attempts to test the sand that their feet are on.  Who is hearing me?  They are saying.  We would be lessened to discount their leadership styles, because we can’t relate to their communication styles.  Language has changed from a time where slurs of speech were accepted to a time where no critique of a person is allowed if you are different from that person in anyway.

Carrying the consciences of people is complicated!

Almost Twenty-Chapter One-Of Ethan's Travels to New York

Almost Twenty!

Strong and Wise?

Ethan the Ezrahite,  I will sing of the mercies of the Lord FOREVER.

I went home from carrying the sweet middle boy into the gate of manhood for our family.  Some gates of manhood are right in our own community and in the close proximity.  It is just like my wise boy to chart his own path into manhood.  Work and travel and paying his own way and paying bills and caring for others is a wonderful school for a young boy.  

So many times God has awakened me to pray for the manhood of this one as the others.  This is a hard trip for this one.

The only mention of nerves was, “I have got butterflies in my tummy now!” Even strong men will mention that they have butterflies. 

My father would have been proud of the quiet determination of the Ethan man.  He loved to think that he had raised us all to be “Men’s Men!”  Fierce and Fearless in the face of danger and able to fight the fiercest foe with no backing down.  

The only thing Bodden girls fear is their shadow.  You don’t fear your shadow and I am glad to know that.  I simply can’t wait to hear your journey’s story and how it will grow you and make you the man of God that He intends to use in this generation.

“Late in the midnight hour…” was the chant in your heart as you launched last night.  Be the light of that city as you are to this city!  Strong and Wise!  Lights don’t make a lot of noise!

Almost Twenty!

Pay attention to the details of your voting, you are going to have that privilege soon.

Obamas admin.  Changed the law about tax status of churches making them change their names to ministries.  The bathroom injunction about transvestites was successful in identifying which states still embrace their Bible Belt identification after the tremendous attack on education.  NC came out as one, so we were on the economic attack list next...they crippled us, by making sports investments contingent on throwing away our principles...

Like Isaac, as we grieved Billy Graham's passing the water wells were stuffed up By the enemies of our convictions...  We couldn't see the enemy and still the haze is with us!

Fight for our convictions or see them demolished as with a wrecking ball...

Pro lifers look simplistic in our focus as they throw anti conviction rhetoric on us.

What issue is worth dividing with our peers about?  Life of the unborn is one of the most important today...

We are angry women blinded by our importunity  and inequality... We need level headed people to guide us through the fog of confusion that has engulfed us.  We need to defend teaching conviction in our schools.  We need to defend women's right to choose the life of her baby!  We need to defend the right to care and live for Jesus.  We ought not attack the bulk of our country, which is convicted to live for Jesus and take for granted the protections that Christianity has blessed us with.  

Jesus is wedded to His church and her defender and guide.  Don't mistake that affection Christ has for His church for weakness.   They have marginalized us and taken advantage of mercy and humility.  

We need Gods protection and assistance to live for him through the reconstruction of our nation from the civil war we've been in.

The Man who bails us out of many financial squirmishes!

?Quiere vegetales?

You went to the store and bought your weekly bunch of carrots, like a rabbit. Are you a rabbit. Where are the meats? What else are you going to eat? Vegetables are good, but that woman Occasio-Cortez has the lot of you millenials hypnotized that all meats are bad and wicked and poison. Are they? really. Won't a nice and juicy cheeseburger heal all the things that ail you on a rainy day? I have seen you enjoy it. Now we are becoming like the East Indians, letting the cows die and live a fat long life, while our children starve to death.

God is in control of all and I promise that when you are starving I will feed you meat, intravenously! No joke!